FIGURE 8:

mRNA silencing of VCAM1 or IL-4Rα inhibits fusion of EPDCs and MSCs with myotubes. Human cells were infected with lentiviral vectors encoding for specific shRNA against VCAM1 or IL-4Rα. mRNA expression was evaluated by semiquantitative RT-PCR analysis and normalized for glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) (A). Cells were then cocultured with differentiating primary mouse myoblasts in the absence or presence of IL-4 for 2 d in DM. The percentage of human nuclei inside myotubes was determined as the ratio between human lamin A/C-labeled nuclei inside TnT-labeled myotubes and the total number of human nuclei (B). Vcm: VCAM1; Il4R: IL4Rα. Values are the mean ± SEM of three separate experiments. Values of p between each test sample compared to its own control were all < 0.005.